I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Fit of the Week: Instablap Loki

Here's a ship that proves I'm just a really really bad person. And yet, every great once in a while in a low-sec gank fleet, I enjoy flying it.

This ship is custom-built to do one thing: make sure a smallish gank fleet roaming through low-sec doesn't leave any pesky frigates behind. You've seen those frigates, so secure in the knowledge that anything with quick enough lock speed to tackle them can't tank the gate guns for long enough to hold them. This particularly applies to low-sec hacking site runners, who roam the wilds in frigs with two, three, or more Warp Core Stabilizers with the intent that even if you do somehow manage to tackle them, they're still going to get away.

Well, they won't get away from this really terrible little ship.

First rule of this ship: don't fly it unless your FC knows what you're doing and approves of it. Second rule of flying this ship: don't tell anyone else what you're doing if you don't have to. Oh my word, will you get yelled at.

Anyway, the basic idea behind this ship is incredibly quick lock time combined with very high alpha damage. You're not even bothering to tackle the target; you're just pumping a 4000 damage alpha into it every 12 seconds or so. That's sufficient to cut straight through most frigates in a single volley. The standard ship for these sorts of tactics is a Muninn fitted to a similar spec. The Loki beats it in several key areas:

Alpha is 25% higher than the equivalent Muninn;

Lock time is 50% quicker than the equivalent Muninn; and,

the base tank is more than three times as strong.

That last bit is critical. An instablap fit Muninn is rather fragile; if it doesn't pop its target on the first go, it will soon have to get off the gate. And if a small group of frigs comes through, the Muninn won't get more than one or two before having to clear the gate. The Loki does more alpha and can stick to the gate longer so even if a group of frigs comes through, the Loki can clear one every 12 seconds or so until the frigs wise up and decide to depart.

The tank comes from a single T2 rig, a LSE, and an Invul. That last is not included in the equivalent Muninn and can be overheated. Resists are surprisingly strong: 70% plus even before heat, making this ship quite friendly to reps from nearby logistics.

But of course the key mods on this ship are the two lock time rigs and the two Sensor Boosters. This is about as terrible a way to play EVE Online as you can get but damn if it isn't effective. This ship can lock a typical frigate in just over one server tick meaning if the target isn't in an instawarp Malediction or something similar, you're pretty much assured of the ability to put damage on it.

Damage is applied through alpha volleys from artillery with good tracking. You can increase the volley damage somewhat with a faction Gyrostab but I don't bother. This ship is intended to be fairly inexpensive by T3 standards so if you lose it you can chuckle about what a bad person you were without feeling it too much. The lock time rigs, in particular, have fallen below 10 million ISK each making them quite affordable even on a budget. The one thing you do lose compared to the equivalent Muninn is cycle time; the HAC refires every 7.5 seconds. This is definitely nice to have (particularly in a frigate swarm). That said, the Loki gives more reliable kills.

A utility neut completes the package but particularly aggressive pilots can go for an Auto Targeting System II instead. This adds three more lockable targets so you can just lock up the world applying your alpha to each target you can keep locked long enough for your guns to cycle. Drop booster is an excellent addition to this ship, but for maximum terrible player attitude, add a Quafe Zero. This makes your lock time even more ridiculous...

This is a rather specialized ship, and will get you called all sorts of names, both by your fleet-mates and by the people you're shooting at. Still, volley tactics from a variety of ships are becoming standard practice right across New Eden. I'm seeing more and more players eschew Muninns for Tornados specifically fit for ultra-fast lock time and ultra-high tracking. But the Loki retains mobility over these ships and is more generally useful in fleets whereas the Tornado is better for gate-camping.

It's a bad old world out there. This ship will let you contribute to that, if you choose to... have fun!

All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only. You
may not have the skills needed for this exact fit. If you do not, feel
free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta
3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war. Ships can also be adjusted
to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the
pilot flying it. Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce
you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type
of ship more aggressively and well.

18 comments:

You guys are responsible for one of the biggest blows ever to high sec, it is published today, and you choose to post a fit for a insta-lock Loki that even I came up with 15 minutes after Apochrypha was released on Sisi?

The Covert Subsystem version of this is also a lot of fun, but you'll lose all your hot drop friends when they get tired of you stealing all the pod kills. And your right, you WILL get yelled at on comms if you bring one and no one else did.

Dumbass question time, why the EMP ammo? Doesn't armor have very high EMP resistance on most ships? Obviously you would blow through shields incredibly fast with it but wouldn't the armor stop you cold? Might it be better to run something like thermal that usually has low resists for both shield and armor?

Yes, but Jester's strategy for dealing with coming up against the wrong type of ship is to try to run away. This is the standard null-sec PVP tactic. along with bringing 4-6 logi's for support (notice the "tank" on this Loki).

Jester has admitted that he doesn't really do much, if any, low-sec roaming, so one really wonders why he posts these sorts of fail fits.

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